Several projects finished

I finished several projects these last couple of months:

These first two projects I made as quickly as I could to prepare for spending several hours out in 20 degree weather, for the Inauguration.

1) Black wool fingerless gloves - I bought some cheap wool from Joann's and made fingerless gloves that I could wear over a pair of regular cotton gloves as extra insulation against the cold. I used one strand for the cuff and two strands for the main body of the glove because it seemed that one strand was just too thin. I used a simple 1x1 rib stitch all the way, and a #6 needle. The thumb hole I made by working the knitting as a flat work instead of a round work for about 8 rows, and then resuming knitting in the round.

2) Black wool socks - I used the remained of the same wool to make socks that I could wear over regular cotton socks, again, to provide extra warmth. I did these toe-up, and actually finished them on the plane to DC. Luckily, the TSA people didn't hassle me over the dpns. I had a little trouble binding off at the cuff - I just couldn't make them stretchy the way I wanted to, and also look nice over the ribbing. The cuff tended to come out wobbly looking or too tight. Oh well.

Both the socks and the gloves worked wonderfully well and my hands and feet were nice and toasty. With all the other layers I was wearing, I was reasonably comfortable - as much as can be expected anyway, with 18 degree wind chill...

3) Cotton string bag - I used the basic pattern found at http://sewintriguing.blogspot.com/2008/09/string-bag-instructions.html

I used one ball of yellow crochet thread (I think it was size 3), and it turned out reasonably well. This was my first project involving a circular needle and I had a little trouble manipulating the stitches over the cable. I don't know if that's because my needle is of inferior quality, or if that's just the way circular needles are.

It's amazing how little space is taken up by the bag and how large it stretches out to be.

New projects
1) The pink variegated socks I made for my daughter accidentally ended up in the dryer and don't fit her anymore. Oops. So I unraveled them, and I'm going to reknit them and see how it turns out. The yarn is felted but not too badly, so I think it might be ok. This is largely experimental.

2) I read about unraveling yarn from a thrift store sweater recently, and I decided to try it out. I bought a 100% merino wool medium sized sweater for $4.50 and unraveled it. It was made of 4-ply (the strands weren't twisted together) yarn, and it seems to be of good quality, as though the sweater wasn't worn much or at all. It's about 25 wpi (wrapped around a pencil), so I'm calling it fingering weight (fingering weight has approx 125 yds/oz). I estimate (roughly) that I recovered 3500 yards of yarn. I will weigh it once I'm sure it's dry and see if I can get a better estimate. But still, that's an enormous amount of wool for $4.50!

I'm going to try to make some socks with it and see how it goes. I knitted up some scrap on size 1 needles and it looks like it will be nice. The color is a semisolid reddish-brown.

Maybe I can separate the ply and make a laceweight shawl or something...